The Internet and other computer networks allow users to share digital information with each other. One such way to share information is through the use of web pages. Hyper-text markup language (HTML) and cascading style sheets (CSS) are two programming languages commonly used to create web pages and other content accessible over the Internet. These languages have functions to format and arrange content in a variety of ways. A web server delivers HTML and CSS code to a user on a client computer via a web browser. The web browser interprets the HTML and CSS code to compose and display web pages for the user. A wide variety of content may be delivered in this fashion, including text, images, audio, video, and interactive software programs. Cloud computing services are another extension of the delivery of content over the Internet. Cloud computing services store files that users may access from any client computer using a web browser. Any user with access to the file may view, edit, and share the file. Files that may be stored on a cloud computing services include word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, images, and many other file types.
Word processing programs installed on a client computer include functionality dedicated to editing and displaying word processing documents. Cloud computing services typically are more limited in their capability for editing and displaying word processing documents on a web browser. HTML and CSS are generalized languages for delivering content over a remote network and are not optimized for the displaying and editing of word processing documents.
One particular problem that arises when displaying cloud-based word processing documents on a web browser is improper rendering of line spacing, which is determined from the baseline of each line of text. HTML automatically calculates the baseline of a line of text based on the font type and font size of the text. If a paragraph of text includes multiple font types and/or multiple font sizes, the relative position of the baseline of each line may vary, and thus the line spacing may vary as well. The result is a visually unappealing block of text.
A similar problem also arises when viewing the same document on different client computers. The hardware, operating system, and web browser of each client computer may affect the display of fonts, so the line spacing for the same cloud-based document may differ between different client computers. There is no way to directly define the baseline in HTML or CSS to prevent uneven line spacing.